


Night Thoughts

by Sangerin



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s05e01 Night, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 11:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8326957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: I sit in silence until the darkness and the stillness oppress me too much. Then I play Beethoven and Mahler, and the walls shake.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written June 1999.

I wander around the room all I can, pacing like a tiger in a cage. I play Beethoven and Mahler so loud the walls shake. I can’t think why people don’t complain. I’m trapped in here, trapped because I won’t go out. I could leave. He says everyone wants to see me. But I stay, because, though I can leave, I can’t. I could walk through that door easily enough. It would open, and I could walk through it. But I can’t bring myself to do it. All I can bring myself to do is sit in here, or stand, or walk, or pace, or wander. I make cup after cup of coffee. I stay awake when I should sleep, I’m too exhausted to do anything. I sit in silence until the darkness and the stillness oppress me too much. Then I play Beethoven again, and the walls shake.

I’m not used to the lack of stars – those twinkling points of light that have always been outside my window. Now, there is only darkness, pressing against the ship. Strange that a scientist, with so much knowledge of the stars, can feel claustrophobic in an area of space that seems to go on and on.

I’ve read the legends of ancient cultures about the stars; holes in a curtain that let the light of a deity burn through, the souls of bygone kings and warriors. In all of these legends, the stars give those on the planet a sense of security, of comfort. Perhaps that is why the lack of stars is so unsettling, even to me.

I scroll through the computer, looking for something to read, something to do. The stories I used to find funny make me cry or scream. Stories that used to make me cry, I laugh at. My mind goes around in circles, never settling on one thing. I try everything to calm myself - meditating on a picture of a starfield, attempting to contact my spirit guide. I even pray. To a being that I don’t believe exists, and that I cannot understand. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the room, imagining my mind as the Indiana sky, and thoughts as clouds, single, separate, benign. Nothing works.

My neck is tight, my head heavy. Rubbing doesn’t help it. There are only so many knots that can be rubbed out with your own hands. I think of old creation stories, where there are always two beings created. Sometimes it seems that the best reason for another person to be around is simply for massages. To reach those places you can’t reach yourself - to work the stresses around and around until finally, they disappear.

But when there are two, there are no more secrets. Nothing stays hidden. Even now, when I am so determinedly on my own, there are no secrets. I can see what he is thinking; depression, insanity - the madwoman in the captain’s quarters. I try desperately to keep it hidden. I can’t lose this veneer of control that I’ve built up for so long. But he sees, and he turns away. Care and disgust battle in his face - I’m still aware enough to see that. But I sink further and further into darkness. Closer and closer to the madwoman in the attic.

An old 19th century literary reference, that’s what I’m turning into. Bertha Rochester. Dark and brooding, hard done by, no chance to change the way she lived her life. Trapped in a tower room by convention, and a society that believed in madness. Desperate to get rid of the woman stealing her husband, a husband she had lost years ago.

But here, there’s no little governess - no one to be jealous of, no one to be jealous for. He comes here, pitying, repulsed. But so sure of himself. So sure of me - it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault. I did what I had to do.

I did what I had to do? I broke the Prime Directive, saved the Ocampa, involved us in a battle with the Kazon that lasted two years. And then I got up on my high horse and refused to break protocol. I broke the big one, so I hold on to the threads of what’s left. I grasp at the threads, clutching with all my might. They are the only things saving me, the things keeping me here, my head above water, locked up inside my quarters. Inside myself.


End file.
